


The Bequest

by stereolightning (phalaenopsis)



Series: Teddy Lupin Stories [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Memories, Summer, Texting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 18:45:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1560338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phalaenopsis/pseuds/stereolightning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two moments in late summer, just before Victoire goes back to school for seventh year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Both Sides Now

**From:** t.r.loop@wwn.wiz.uk

 **To:** victoirious@wwn.wiz.uk

 **Subject:** It's Box Day

 **At:** 10:50 AM GMT

Wotcher.

Today is the day. Am opening the box.

Come over?

Gran says tell your Mum she says hello. How was France?

_Sent from my iFloo_

_***_

**From:** victoirious@wwn.wiz.uk

 **To:** t.r.loop@wwn.wiz.uk

 **Subject:** RE: It's Box Day

 **At:** 10:51 AM GMT

B there in 10.

France = long story.

Are you allergic to almonds? Or is it cashews? Can't remember. Worst girlfriend ever.

_Sent from my iFloo_

_***_

**From:** t.r.loop@wwn.wiz.uk

 **To:** victoirious@wwn.wiz.uk

 **Subject:** RE: It's Box Day

 **At:** 10:51 AM GMT

Cashews. Disagree: best gf ever.

<3

_Sent from my iFloo_

_***_

**From:** victoirious@wwn.wiz.uk

 **To:** t.r.loop@wwn.wiz.uk

 **Subject:** RE: It's Box Day

 **At:** 10:59 AM GMT

Sry. Running late. Potters r here and James set Dad's luggage on fire.

_Sent from my iFloo_

_***_

**From:** t.r.loop@wwn.wiz.uk

 **To:** victoirious@wwn.wiz.uk

 **Subject:** RE: It's Box Day

 **At:** 11:00 AM GMT

LOL.

_Sent from my iFloo_

_***_

**From:** victoirious@wwn.wiz.uk

 **To:** t.r.loop@wwn.wiz.uk

 **Subject:** RE: It's Box Day

 **At:** 11:02 AM GMT

Aunt G = scary when hacked off.

Mum says tell your Gran bonjour, & is she coming for Sunday lunch?

_Sent from my iFloo_

_***_

**From:** t.r.loop@wwn.wiz.uk

 **To:** victoirious@wwn.wiz.uk

 **Subject:** RE: It's Box Day

 **At:** 11:04 AM GMT

Confirmed for Sunday. She will bring trifle again. Honestly, they should get their own mobiles. What am I, a house elf?

_Sent from my iFloo_

_***_

**From:** victoirious@wwn.wiz.uk

 **To:** t.r.loop@wwn.wiz.uk

 **Subject:** RE: It's Box Day

 **At:** 11:05 AM GMT

Don't say that in front of Aunt H.

_Sent from my iFloo_

_***_

**From:** t.r.loop@wwn.wiz.uk

 **To:** victoirious@wwn.wiz.uk

 **Subject:** RE: It's Box Day

 **At:** 11:06 AM GMT

Brilliant idea: going 2 teach Kreacher how 2 txt. Srsly. Will save so much time.

_Sent from my iFloo_

_***_

**From:** victoirious@wwn.wiz.uk

 **To:** t.r.loop@wwn.wiz.uk

 **Subject:** RE: It's Box Day

 **At:** 11:07 AM GMT

Setting off now.

HP sends <3.

xoxoxo

_Sent from my iFloo_

_***_

**From:** t.r.loop@wwn.wiz.uk

 **To:** victoirious@wwn.wiz.uk

 **Subject:** RE: It's Box Day

 **At:** 11:08 AM GMT

xoxoxo

_Sent from my iFloo_

_***_

Teddy shoved his phone into his back pocket and walked out into his Gran's front garden, which hummed with nattering fairies and droning bumblebees and the beating of dragonfly wings. The hedge of Agapanthus was in full flower, and its globes of tiny, trumpet-shaped blossoms were the same shade of blue as his hair. He heard the crack of Apparition – loud, because Victoire at seventeen-and-a-bit had not yet gotten the hang of it – and turned to find her standing behind a clump of sunflowers. He pushed between the tall stems, shaking a few black seeds onto the ground.

“Not splinched, are you?” he asked.

“No, not splinched.” She brushed her blonde fringe off her forehead. Her freckles had darkened to amber over the summer.

“Hey, you got new glasses,” he said, lifting her off the ground in the sort of enthusiastic embrace that a summer apart merited.

“Yeah,” she said, blinking at him from behind cat's-eye frames. “So it's box day, then?”

“Yes. Decided a couple of days ago. But I wanted you to be here for it. So I waited.”

“Not long, I hope?”

“No. Not long. Missed you.”

He set her down and she put her hands on either side of his face. He knew from her expression that she understood: he wasn't scared of the box, and it wasn't some albatross around his neck, but his grandmother had kept some of his parents' things in there, out of sight, for a reason, and he had a few guesses as to what the reason was. They'd had very few belongings at all, actually, his parents – the bulk of them being an eclectic music collection and an assortment of books. The box contained those few things Teddy was not supposed to see until he was of age, and even at seventeen, he hadn't wanted to. He did now, though. He had encountered enough disturbing things during Healer training that a box of naughty love letters or whatever seemed pretty trifling.

Teddy kissed Victoire hello and then pulled back. She grinned, and it was probably a few stray Veela genes that made her look supernaturally and irrepressibly lovely even as her lips slid into a slight frown.

“Stop that,” she said.

“Stop what?”

“Stop making your face like that. I know what you look like.”

“I'm only doing it a bit. Besides, I've got very unsexy spots at the moment.”

She rolled her eyes. He acquiesced, letting his face relax into its normal configuration, imperfections and all.

“Better?” he asked.

“Much,” she said. She fished around in her pockets and pulled out a brown paper bag. “Brought chocolate. From Paris. There're almonds in, but not cashews.”

“Ah, you guessed right. Best girlfriend ever.”

“Well, I was going to wash my mouth out if I guessed wrong. I ate one on the train.”

“At least we know it's not poisoned.”

“Pfft. You need to stop reading _Adventures of the Animagi_. It's making you paranoid. Besides, you're way too old for them.”

“Am not.”

“They're kids' books, Teddy.”

“Get rid of your unicorn collection and then we'll talk, mademoiselle,” he said, nudging her in the stomach.

She flashed him that smile again, the one with the winsome, probably-involuntary Veela sparkle that looked like perpetual afterglow, and he pulled her in for another hair-mussing kiss.

Together they strolled up the garden path, with only a minor snogging-related detour under the rose arbor, and entered the house.

He put the kettle on and summoned the box from the closet upstairs. It was a small thing, really, the box – just a tatty shoebox from Heele and Vamp's with a light coating of dust on the lid. He set it down on the kitchen table as the tea steeped, and he tried not to stare at it as he stuffed his hand into the bag of bonbons.

“So,” he said, chewing pensively on some particularly mind-blowing French confectionery.

“Box day,” she said, scooting her chair closer so that their shoulders touched.

“Right.”

 _Wit beyond measure,_ he reminded himself. Knowledge was infinitely better than conjecture.

At that moment, Teddy's Gran appeared at the back door, her arms full of sun-fattened courgettes.

“Box day?” she asked, running her grey eyes across the scene and wincing slightly.

“Box day,” Teddy said, nodding.

“I think I'll leave you to it. Hello, Victoire.”

“Hello,” said Victoire. “Did you want help with those?”

“Oh, no, thank you.”

Teddy thought his Gran probably wanted Victoire there for box day about as much as he did. Which was a lot. She set down the vegetables on the kitchen work surface and returned to the back garden, the door snicking shut behind her.

Thinking of Pandora, Teddy opened the box and set down its cardboard lid, and it was not in fact full of evils. It was full of folded parchment, and envelopes, and postcards, some of them written in glittering purple ink.

“Oh,” he said. “I did think it would be letters. Or pictures.”

“What else would it be?” asked Victoire.

“I dunno. A soothsaying amulet, like in _Adventures of the Animagi,_ book six?”

Victoire did not laugh, but smiled and squeezed his hand.

“Here, you read one,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I want you to.”

She picked up a note written on an especially thin, water-stained piece of parchment. Teddy watched her read it. Her blonde eyebrows squeezed together, and then she looked up at him, her expression soft and watery.

“Here,” she said, sliding the letter across the table.

Teddy read.

***

_November 17, 1996_

_N.,_

_There is a gale tonight, shaking the trees above ground, and I can almost hear their roots keening._

_I've already finished my small cache of books, and there aren't any other ones here, literacy not being one of the noteworthy characteristics of werewolves, generally. However, I cannot complain. My being here is necessary. Also, I am long overdue in writing you this letter, and now I have no books to distract me, so here it is._

_I cannot pretend that we did not become something more than friends last year, though it took me far too long to realise it at the time, and I know I did some damage to you in the process of sorting it all out. I'm sorry for that. Nevertheless, I am so grateful to know you, and I hope that one day we will be nothing but dear friends, and you will have everything you deserve. I know that you wish things could be different – but we were kidding ourselves, N._ ~~_That kiss outside St Mungo's was_ ~~

~~_There is no world in which you and I can_ ~~

_[illegible]_

_On second thought, I am not going to send you this letter._

_[illegible]_

_I miss you, and I wish I didn't._

_I miss your laugh. I miss those Friday evenings last year with you and S. and our very sordid jokes. Who would have thought we could be happy in a place that bleak? It seems to be in the nature of human beings that we cannot appreciate what we have until it is gone. Even if we have lost enough already that we really ought to know better._

_I could never forgive myself if I robbed you of the chance for future happiness._

_R._

***

“I knew,” Teddy said, in answer to Victoire's questioning look. “I knew he tried to – you know. Push her away. For a while.”

“He must have come round, though.” She turned the parchment from side to side in her hand. “His handwriting is a bit like yours. Those slanted 'o's.”

He looked over the paper, and yes, they were – each o tilted slightly to the right, more like a seed than a moon.

He pushed the box at Victoire and nodded at it, urging her to read another, and she did.

“Oh,” she said after a beat, her cheeks coloring.

He leaned closer. “What? What's it say?”

“Oh, Teddy. You... you probably shouldn't read this one. It's, erm. Very sexy.”

He glanced over her shoulder at the parchment and read a line or two of what started out as game of noughts and crosses and then became a free-verse poem with a quite graphic metaphor about eating dirigible plums –

“Yeah, put that back in the box, will you? I don't need to know any of _that,_ ” he said.

She folded it up, blushing more deeply.

Maybe someday he would be able to read that sort of thing and find it sweet rather than weird. At the moment, it was still resolutely weird.

After another ten minutes, they finished looking through the box, and he was glad that Victoire had been there for it. She was due back at home to help with the un-packing and re-packing, so she left with a promise to return as soon as she could get away.


	2. Sunshine

The shadows of leaves bobbed within the fat band of sunlight angling through the bedroom window. Teddy watched them move across the wall, and the quilt, and Victoire, who had slept over in his bed for the first time ever. After a while, he realized she was only pretending to sleep. And that she was wearing a faded green t-shirt emblazoned with the logo of the Weird Sisters, rather than the clothes she had arrived in last night.

“Hey. You're wearing my shirt,” he said.

She sat up. “Is that alright? I couldn't find anything else to sleep in. I kept saying _Accio pyjamas_ , and nothing came, so I just picked up the first thing I found in your closet. Do you always sleep in the buff?”

“Yes.”

“Even in winter?”

“I wear socks in winter.”

She shook her head at his foolishness, and he scooted closer to kiss her. For a minute there was only skin, and the smell of shampoo, and incomparable bliss. Then she slid her leg across his thigh and attempted to position herself on top of him, but she misjudged just how narrow his bed was, and they both ended up falling onto the floor in a tangle of quilt and limbs. Luckily, the carpet made for a soft-ish landing place.

“Are you sure you're part Veela? I think you might be part troll, or part Bumbling Wincackler.”

“Ooh, shut up.”

She gave him a look of sincerest annoyance and then flicked his ear. He attempted to look nettled, but found that rather impossible at the moment.

“What the hell is a Bumbling Wincackler, anyway?” she asked, still not attempting to get off of him at all.

“I dunno. Luna mentioned them once. Supposedly they knocked down a bunch of stones at Stonehenge. Ow.”

She had flicked him again. “Just because you're so damn graceful - ”

“Not my choice. Gran made me take ballet lessons until I was eight. I was the only boy in class. I always had to be Fritz in the Nutcracker. Are we going to stay like this all day?”

“If I could, I would,” she said, on a sigh. “But I've got a train to catch.”

He groaned. “Come on, stay with me. Abandon your education. Harry did, and he turned out all right. Seventh year is totally superfluous anyway.”

“Can't. Shan't. I've got eight NEWTs to earn, and they won't earn themselves. I really should go now. I don't think they believed my cover story about spending the night at Aunt Ginny's.”

“Mhhhgrh.”

“So articulate,” she said, tapping his nose. “With your gift for words and my flawless sense of balance, we could conquer the world.”

He chuckled. She rolled off him and sat up into a kneeling position and brushed her fringe out of her eyes. She looked like sunlight made flesh, all freckles and golden hair and laughing eyes.

“Can I tell you something?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“That's not really my shirt.”

“Well, whose is it, then? Your Gran's? Didn't realize she was a fan of loud nineties Britpop.”

“No,” he said, chuckling again. “It's Mum's. My Mum, I mean.”

Her mouth opened and her eyes went soft, and his heart twinged a little.

“It's all right,” he said. “I have a dozen of them. She had one in every color.”

“Do you want me to take it off?” she asked, and her face was so serious that he didn't even make the obvious joke, which was, _Merlin, yes, take it all off immediately_.

“No. I don't mind. That's the fun of old t-shirts, right? To borrow them from somebody you love. Go on, take it with you. Wear it on the train.”

She fingered the hem of the shirt. “It is all nice and faded and broken in.”

He stretched and then sat up beside her, the quilt still half-wrapped around him. “Let me come and see you off. I promise not to make it obvious that you spent the night with me. I'll pretend I haven't seen you for days.”

She blinked rapidly, fighting back what looked like eight different emotions, and then she said, “Fine. Big romantic cad.”

He grinned and pushed her onto her back and kissed her in the gently wavering light and shadow cast by the sun and the oak tree outside his window. 

When they came up for air, she said, “You said the L-word. You said 'borrow them from somebody you love.'”

“Well, I assumed this was reciprocal. Has it not been obvious for the past four years that I'm completely infatuated with you? I thought it was practically tattooed across my forehead.”

“Not infatuation anymore, though, yes? I mean, you actually, properly love me, and not some idea of me.”

“Yes. True.”

She hummed contentedly. “Yeah. Likewise.”


End file.
